WASHINGTON - Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, is introducing legislation to push pack the Affordable Care Act's mandate that individuals purchase health coverage or pay a penalty from the end of next month until 2016.

Scalise, joined by Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., said Tuesday that their new bill is intended to give families the same extra time the president unilaterally gave businesses with 50-99 workers last week. Those with 100 or more employees need to begin providing coverage to workers in 2015.

"President Obama does not have the legal authority to unilaterally rewrite laws that pick winners and losers, but that's exactly what this administration has attempted each time it delays the law for a select few," said Scalise, chair of the Republican Study Committee, the House's conservative caucus. "Hard-working taxpayers and their families deserve the same relief from the Obamacare train wreck that select corporations are being offered by the White House."

The president has said that Americans with health care policies that don't meet the minimum coverage standards set by the Affordable Care Act can keep them without penalty through the end of the year. He is reportedly considering a lengthier extension.

But there's a good reason he's unlikely to issue a blanket delay for the health law's individual mandate, which requires most Americans to obtain insurance by March 31, or pay a penalty. That's because without a mandate, healthier, younger individuals would be less likely to purchase coverage, leaving people with more serious health concerns to make up a larger percentage of the health insurance rolls, which would lead to an increase in premiums.

In 2014, the penalty for individuals without health coverage is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child, up to $285, or 1 percent of family income, whichever is greater.

"Congressman Scalise
is obviously trying to get the Creative Obstruction Award of the Year as he
tries to find every single different approach to repeal the Affordable Care Act,"
said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, which supports the health
law.

"One reason
this approach by Congressman Scalise, if you took it seriously, is so harmful
is that a key objective is to keep premiums as low as possible and that means
that every effort should be made to get as many people enrolled and to include
in that enrollment younger and healthier people. Obviously what Scalise is
proposing would have the opposite effect."

The change in the employer mandate to provide health coverage to workers was the second announced by the president.

In July, 2013, the administration said it was delaying until 2015 the requirement that employers with at least 50 full-time equivalent employees provide health coverage for their full-time workers. Then last week, it announced that it was delaying that mandate until 2016 for employers with between 50-99 fulltime equivalent workers.

Health care tax credits for companies with 25 or fewer fulltime workers have been available since the health law's enactment in 2010.